Jesus tells us in Mark 10:27, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."
What an awesome promise! Currently, PLC-ers Matt & Natalie Miller are in the Czech Republic, serving at a youth camp. Pray for the Miller's and their team -- that they would experience God making impossible things in the Czech Republic, possible!
As you pray for them, you can follow their trip updates on the Influence blog -- here's their most recent post after they arrived in Brno, CZ:
Today we continued our training at the Mayak Center in Brno, CZ. Most of our training today centered around Czech culture and the role that we are to play in the camp this next week. We spent the morning taking a tour of the city of Brno and learning more about both their history and what life is like for them today. Below you will find a photo of our team.
The missionaries here have spent a lot of time studying the Czech people and how we can best interact with them. For those of you who don't know, the Czech people in general tend to be very reserved. Relationships are very important to them, though. They say once you become friends with a Czech, you are friends for life. That's what makes these short term missions trips unique, and frankly somewhat challenging. The missionaries here have a list of "5 thresholds" that they use to gauge where the Czech people are at spiritually. Here they are:
- Trusting a Christian
- Curiosity
- Becoming open to change
- Seeking after God
- Entering the Kingdom
Now the camp is made up of mostly high school and college aged kids who would not consider themselves to be believers. So the difficult thing for us to deal with is that there are very little conversions to Christianity that take place during the week at camp. However, when you understand the culture a bit more, it becomes easier to see that we can still make a big difference in the lives of the campers. If we can take the time to gain the trust of some of the campers by being their friend, then perhaps we can get them to the point where they are curious enough to start asking questions about God. Then, if we are able to come back the next year, hopefully we can pickup where we left off and get them to the point that they are willing to change some things in their lives in order to follow Christ.
Natalie and I are especially excited to continue developing some of the relationships that we started at last years camp. We are hoping that the trust we have developed with those campers will lead to conversations that get them asking questions about what it means to be a Christian.
(Two years ago we made a video about the history of Christianity in the Czech Republic. Check it out.)
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